


An Axe to Grind

by Ace_Of_Fleurons



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Drama, Angst and Feels, But It's Pretty Light So Don't Worry About It, Flash Fic, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mild Blood, We Need to Know You Cowards, What Happened before Claire Found Steve Capcom, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22256650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ace_Of_Fleurons/pseuds/Ace_Of_Fleurons
Summary: What happened before Claire found Steve in that colosseum-like dungeon in the depths of the Ashford's Antarctic facility? Steve faces off with Alexia—for the first and last time—and in that moment, she seals his fate.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	An Axe to Grind

He awoke to the arctic cold, the steady sound of dripping water, and the stale taste of blood.

Steve groaned, attempting to move but seizing up at the icy touch of steel against his skin. Opening his eyes, peered down at the shackles binding his hands and feet to an elegantly-carved chair. He scanned through blurry vision the circular stone walls and steel-plated armor that surrounded him. Blinking a few times, he squinted through the haze in his head as his perception cleared. Was he in… a colosseum?

“So, you’re finally awake.”

Steve jerked his head to an iron-barred door opening at the end of the room. A woman dressed in a flowing purple gown stepped in, hair tumbling over her shoulders in golden ringlets like fire and eyes as sharp and icy as cut sapphires. She held in her delicate and slender hands a large axe.

Straightening, Steve met the woman’s glare directly with his own. “Alexia.”

The head of the Ashford family smiled at the boy, teeth perfectly aligned and white. He hated it. “You know, you and your girlfriend were hard to catch,” mused Alexia, looking over the weapon as she shifted it in her hands. “Almost got away from me, you two. That would have been a shame.”

Steve struggled against his restrains, swearing at her. “If you think you’re gonna keep us in this madhouse, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Alexia laughed. It was childlike, with a crescendo that caused her whole body to shake. Steve felt his face burn up as he thrust his wrists against the chains, cutting through skin. Blood trickled onto the arm of the chair.

“Oh, do I?” asked Alexia. “Now, that’s news to me. You’ve got some humor to you.”

“I’ll show you how funny I am once I get out of here and deck you right in the—”

“Hm, and a temper, too.” She set the axe down on a long table beside sets of glass lab equipment. It was then Steve realized the water he heard dripping earlier when he had awoken was actually liquids being dropped into a vial. Alexia now picked it up and tapped it a few times with her nails. She watched it slosh back and forth. “That’ll come in handy.”

As she fiddled with equipment in a drawer, Steve seized this moment of distraction to try and escape. He folded his hands and attempted to slide them through the shackles by the blood that still trickled through the broken skin on his wrists. Hiding the noise, he attempted conversation. “Where are you keeping Claire?”

Alexia smiled that wicked smile again, not giving him the satisfaction of her laugh. “So what, are you her knight in shining armor now, boy?” she asked instead. Steve could feel his heart ramming faster against his chest, disrupting him from his task. “If you must know, she’s poisoned. Probably dead now, if no-one came to rescue her yet.”

She turned around, the vial turned into a syringe and her smile turned into a thin line. “Oh, wait. That was _your_ job, wasn’t it?”

In blind rage, Steve ripped his left hand out of its restrain and pulled back a fist to punch her.

Alexia caught it as it came within a few centimeters of hitting her face. Her hand was cold, almost unnaturally so. Steve’s eyes widened. She tightened her grip and twisted his arm around so that the skin of his underarm was exposed.

“You’ve gone ahead and made the choice of which side for me,” she stated. With her other hand, she held up the syringe. “How polite. It seems like your parents did teach you manners after all.”

Before he could respond, she plunged the needle into his arm, into his cephalic vein. She pushed the contents of the vial into his blood stream, all the while squeezing his fist shut with her hand. Steve’s fingers felt like they would break.

“Let’s see how your manners fare after this.” Alexia yanked the syringe from his forearm, releasing her grip. Steve screamed, pulling his arm closer to himself. She shrugged, throwing a comment nonchalantly over her shoulder as she stalked away from him. “Father’s didn’t, although I doubt he had them to begin with.”

Alexia threw the vial against the floor. It exploded into a maelstrom of glass shards, strewing beneath the woman’s shoes like fallen leaves as she walked back to the table with the axe on it. 

Steve’s whole body burned with every beat his heart took. He labored to breathe, hardly even noticing when his shackles unhinged. Hissing through clenched teeth, he doubled in on himself and rubbed his wounded arm. He watched through clouding vision as Alexia approached him with the axe in her hands.

Every move Steve's muscles made caused fire to burn through his veins. Despite this, he snickered. His head felt heavy. “What,” he managed to sneer, “you’re finally gonna use that thing?”

Alexia peered down at the weapon, raising an eyebrow. “No,” she answered simply. As if it weighed nothing, she heaved the axe back and swung it towards Steve’s neck. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the wind hit his face before the impact slammed his head against the back of the chair. His ears rang. Consciousness slipped through his grasp like sand. But he was still alive, held against the chair by the gap in the axe’s prongs.

Alexia smiled again, walking among the scattered remains of her research and opening the door with her lifeless hands.

“You are,” she stated, and slammed the door.

**Author's Note:**

> Before I go on, I mixed together Darkside Chronicles' and CVX's versions of the colosseum/dungeon because I liked both of them and couldn't decide between them.
> 
> I can't believe that this is the first fic about Steve that I've posted. CVX is my absolute favorite RE game, and BurnField's my all-time favorite ship from the series. It just gets me, idk.
> 
> I’ve had this in my drafts for a while now, and I’ve played around with the idea of making it a song-fic, but decided against it because I liked where it ended. I still might continue it with a song-fic, though, who knows.
> 
> Anyway, Capcom’s decided to haunt me with this character and now I’m cursed to never stop writing fics about him
> 
> Fun fact: this is one of the only Steve fics I’ve written that doesn’t include my favorite quote from the game in it (“You’re warm”). And trust me, I tried everything to worm it in there. (I finally settled on the contrast of Alexia's cold skin in comparison to Claire's warmth. Hopefully it counts.)


End file.
